Professor Irene Tracey

Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey, CBE, FMedSci, led Merton College 2019–22 and is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, a department she led for several years. She was tenured in 2001 to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics with Tutorial Studentship in Medicine at Christ Church. Additionally, she held the Nuffield Chair in Anaesthetic Sciences for 12 years with a Fellowship at Pembroke College.

She is also President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS).

Professor Tracey's research on the neuroscience of pain has contributed to a better understanding of pain perception and its relief in the human brain. She has also used neuroimaging to better understand anaesthesia-induced altered states of consciousness. Irene has served and continues to serve academia through her election to the councils of the International Association for the Study of Pain, British Neuroscience Association and Medical Research Council. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Medical Research by Her Majesty The Queen in 2022.

Professor Tracey completed her undergraduate degree and doctorate at Merton College, Oxford, in biochemistry; her doctoral work focused on early use of magnetic resonance imaging methods to study disease mechanisms.

Professor Tracey held a postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School, working at the Martinos Centre for Biomedical Imaging, before returning to Oxford in 1997, when she became a founding member and then director for ten years of the world-leading institution now known as the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. She has won many academic and international prizes throughout her career.

Professor Tracey is married to Professor Myles Allen and they have three children.